The door to euphoria was flung wide open as if nothing had happened, This euphoria also gave birth to a serpent of boasting, bluster, arrogance, recklessness, and the disease of schizophrenia, All those setbacks, failures, poverty, and destitution did not attract the attention of the Arab-Islamists, nor did they garner their concern, Therefore, they did not strive to remove what recklessness and the cursed conspiracy had destroyed, The logic of those conspired against led them to demand that the conspiracy and the conspirators fix what they had ruined, They were to finance those nations, receive the refugees, and then liberate the people from their own dictatorial tendencies, In addition, they were to establish unified states for the victims of the conspiracy, They were also to instill democracy in the hearts of the people and free them from their self-destructive tyranny, Furthermore, they were to arm the warring factions, dictatorships, kings, sultans, and so on. Whoever examines the state of those countries, the dependency of those in charge, the vermin and serpents they have spawned, and the Arab-Islamist way of thinking, cannot help but say… Those peoples and their leaders were and remain the epitome of foolish naivety and stupid ignorance, and that these people are mentally unsound, i.e., psychologically ill, as Saadeh said!
We return to Saadeh and his definition of Arabism and ask ourselves whether he was exaggerating or objectively realistic! Does the journey of these countries from the ocean to the Gulf allow for an assessment that is different or contrary to Saadeh’s assessment? And can any obstacle destroy this region in the way we see and feel now except the obstacle of the incurable disease, that is, the psychological disease of Arabism-Islamism, and the disease of addiction to failure, the practice of suicide, contempt for life, then dependency, fatalism, and others.
My friend, I am weary of my Arab identity, Is Arabism a curse and a punishment? This is what the poet Nizar Qabbani expressed, who also wrote: ” Beware of listening to a single word of the speeches of the Arabs, for they are all grammar, syntax, and literature , and all of them are mere figments of dreams and fleeting pleasures .” It seems that Arabism is not only a psychological illness, but also a punishment, followed by dreams and pleasures, It is a great lie that has deceived the people for decades, since independence. For its sake, the Syrians sacrificed their Syrian identity. The people set out from the beginning of the twentieth century, transcending their Syrian interests and yearning for a wider and more comprehensive horizon of hope and future. The world was from the Atlantic to the Gulf. Thus, an Arab-Islamic cultural and political structure dominated the minds of people at all social, cultural, and political levels. Thus, the subject of concerns was: Syria carried the Arab concern before the Syrian concern, Did Syria err, and did the Syrians err in preferring others over themselves? The other was nothing but a giant lie, a curse, a punishment, and a series of musical interludes that destroyed Syria and its future!
The Syrians shared with Arabism their bread, the fruits of the tree, and the building stone,They gave Arabism their beating heart. What did Arabism do with its beating heart? There is no need to search deeply for the answer, as a brief look at the region provides the answer. It is a homeland that was killed by the knives of words, the tracks of tanks, and the barrels of planes falling from the sky. On the ground, there are the slaughterhouses of verses and the cleavers of jihadists and jihadists. The killing of the Syrian homeland was at the hands of Arabism-Islamism in the first or even exclusive sense.
On the other hand, it is possible to partially absolve Arab-Islamism of responsibility for the failure, but it is impossible in any way to absolve Arab-Islamists of most of the responsibility. They turned Arabism into a religion and turned religion into politics, and there is no fate for politicized religion but rigidity, and no fate for politics that wears the religious Quraysh robe but misery and wretchedness, That is, the Arab-Islamic twin committed suicide, There is no longer a religion, just as there is no longer a politics, The countries were bankrupted by a dead view regarding the establishment of a state and the development of peoples into a cohesive and supportive society, When the Arabists began to think Arab nationalistically, the West was on the verge of the end of its nationalist thought and the beginning of its internationalist thought, which they developed into secularism and globalization, The homelands of this region were unable to keep pace with history and the development of humanity, so the homelands fell outside of history, and turned into a parasitic tail on humanity in everything.
Among the causes of failure that must be mentioned was that addictive tendency towards heritage and passion for the buried old, then a vague, incomprehensible anti-modernity tendency, which they transformed into modernization with oil money, then a passion for practicing obedience and submission contrary to human nature, such as obedience to the rigid text and then submission to the will of dreamy goals,They wanted Arab unity and an Islamic caliphate without thinking about the possibility of implementing these projects and then thinking about the usefulness or feasibility of those projects!
Efforts were squandered, and the magic backfired, The pursuit of Arab unity transformed into fragmentation, and the countries that were supposed to unite with others disintegrated into dozens of entities, Even talk of unity became a source of anxiety and fear, All dreams and visions were transformed into their opposites, The demand for freedom became enslavement, and the demand for modernity became the entrenchment of backwardness, No contamination by Western ideas, except for its products like aphrodisiacs, The devout Arab nationalists failed to grasp the relationship between reason, science, and production—at least for the sake of producing their women’s underwear, They didn’t keep pace with other civilizations intellectually, nor even through imitation, Modernity became synonymous with a hypothetical enemy that must be rejected because it defiles Arab identity,Instead of modernity, there was consumerist modernization, Modernity became confused with modernization, and the Arab nationalist-Brotherhood members failed to understand the difference between them. We must not forget here the formidable ability of the Arab nationalist-Brotherhood members to manufacture enemies through insults, recriminations, satire, bombastic speeches, deafening shouts, and noise. Confronting the other by insulting and denouncing him in wooden language repeated for the millionth time, then the bombastic, resounding, threatening speeches, the resounding shouting and noise… a nation of voices! Here the Saudi thinker Al-Qasimi was right! As was Sa’ada and Nizar Qabbani!
Adopting the methodology of development and modernization by copying from the non-advanced, let’s say colonialism! It was the only thing that could be obtained, The peoples rejected the blessing of creation and waited for the blessings of the Creator, and for decades, even hundreds of years, the peoples have been waiting, It does not seem that the blessings of the Creator are coming!!
The chronic, unjust violence, followed by wars, assassinations, backwardness, and poverty, culminating in the execution of Antoun Saadeh after a trial lasting only a few hours without legal representation, confirm the validity of Saadeh’s assertion regarding Arabism as a psychological illness, The peoples of this region should look inward, searching for the causes of the failures suffered by the countries that adopted the Arab-Islamist ideology, With them, these countries lost every battle in life—social, political, economic, and even military, These peoples relied absolutely on this ideology, believing that salvation would come at the hands of this system, After the defeat, or defeats, the minds of the Arabists and the Muslim Brotherhood searched for the reason, Heads swelled, most likely due to an intellectual burden or umbilical cord that lacked enlightened thought,This burden or cord gave birth to a mouse or a gerbil called “conspiracy.” The newborn’s mission was to shift responsibility from its parents—that is, from the Arab-Islamist duality—and project this responsibility onto others, Thus, the gerbils believed themselves innocent of any guilt or shortcoming. What happened is not within their responsibility, The conspiracy was the first and last cause of the setback or the accursed catastrophe,It is not a defeat, but a setback, and the linguistic difference between a setback and a defeat is very large.